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Researcher(s):
Marielle Bossio
ENVS course(s): 400 Initiated: September 2016 Completed: May 2017 Go to project site
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This is a project record for my senior capstone, where I examine the roles and importance of art in the discussion of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is currently understood as a proposed name for the current geologic epoch, in which human impacts serve as major and defining characteristics of change upon the planet Today, the Anthropocene serves as a sort of “buzzword” (Castree, 2015), and has become very popular specifically within Western academia, with a large focus on the importance of arts and humanities within the discussion of the Anthropocene. Though sometimes associated with apocalypse or “panic” (Lotringer, 2015) where humans bring about “self-inflicted death” (Lotringer, 2015), I am interested in the ways art may play a role in the conversation of “what it means to live, think and feel in the Anthropocene, rather than perish under it.” (Anderson, 2015)
This capstone is situated rather broadly, “in art”. The three artists whom I have chosen to look closely at are all well-known to a certain degree, their art being shown in fairly well known galleries (such as the SFMoMA and Mass MoCA) and featured on such programs/new outlets as Art21, TedX and Art in America to name a few. These three artists came up time and again during my research, and their practices seem to be influential in the realm of art that deals with intersections of environmental questions. These artists sustain practices which span the course of many works, and the pieces are intended formally, usually with either a gallery or exhibition in mind. This highly developed practice allows considerable focus to the concepts and modes of representation, and the work is held in high esteem by many other artists and art critics. Due to who is mainly talking about the Anthropocene, this further situates this project in the realm of western academia.
This project is theory based, where the end result is an analysis of various artworks and artist’s practices as I attempt to answer my guiding and focus questions:
•how can art help people to understand and/or process controversial and complex topics?
•what are some of the key characteristics of the Anthropocene, and how are they being represented or seen in art?
Findings from the application of the Anthropocene framework to the artworks demonstrated that many pieces from artists discussing the Anthropocene do not fully demonstrate or align with key Anthropocene concepts. This indicates a disconnect between humanities scholars and artists regarding the Anthropocene. With artistic practice as a research process and mediator to work through ideas, this disconnect may reflect the newness of the subject (especially outside the humanities discipline) and indicate a lag; as a more general population we have not yet made this perceptual transition or shift.
Anderson, Kayla. 2015. “Ethics, Ecology, and the Future: Art and Design Face the Anthropocene.” Leonardo 48 (4): 338–47. doi:10.1162/LEON_a_01087.
Castree, Noel. 2015. “The Anthropocene.” In International Encyclopedia of Geography, edited by Doug Richardson. Wiley-Blackwell.
Lotringer, Sylvére, Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin, “The Last Political Scene”, in Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies, 2015, Edited by Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin. Open Humanities Press. http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=560010.